Vacuum packing and long term storage.

[Lemne]

I got mine from Lidl last week. They still have them in £20 with a 3 year guarantee.

[intuitive]

had our first arrival of dried food and spices etc today. 25kg brown rice, 25kg white rice, 25kg red lentils, 25kg chickpeas, 20 bags of soup mix, huge bag of sea salt, 2 large backs of spiced crackers, and about 10 large tubs of spices...most of the dates are BB July 2022 apart from the brown rice which is may time next year. what would be the best way to store these for longterm? can we increase the dates by vacuum packing?

[jennyjj01]

had our first arrival of dried food and spices etc today. 25kg brown rice, 25kg white rice, 25kg red lentils, 25kg chickpeas, 20 bags of soup mix, huge bag of sea salt, 2 large backs of spiced crackers, and about 10 large tubs of spices...most of the dates are BB July 2022 apart from the brown rice which is may time next year. what would be the best way to store these for longterm? can we increase the dates by vacuum packing?

Wow! Serious stash! Makes my dry stocks look negligible, and I figure I've got way over a year's worth of provisions. You sure have carbs sorted!

Serious questions:-
Are these the sort of things in your staple diet? Do you ever make broth? I've lived on such rations for a week and I would have killed for a tin of tomatoes?
Do you have an appropriate stash of things like pasta sauce, tinned tomatoes, passatta, cooking sauces, cooking oil* and dried onions and veg, such that you could make a variety of enjoyable meals? In any case, I salute you for your preparedness. I reckon 50kg of tinned tomatoes, puree, jarred sauce, etc and a lot of nice drinks would be needed to wash that lot down.

I wouldn't worry about BBE days for dried pasta, white rice and pulses if you keep then in the nominal 'cool dry place'.* I would happily keep them 3 to 5 years beyond BBE if stored well. I don't use brown or wholemeal rice, and I understand it doesn't store as long. Moisture would be the biggest enemy and either plastic containers with silica gel bags or vac seal as they are will be fine. Beware hard foods puncturing your vac bags, some of which might need double bagging. Always Double Seal the ends.

Another few questions: Have you balanced these survival rations with happy living rations like tea, milk, wine, chocolate raisins, ... whatever you enjoy day to day? Are you planning to rotate these stocks into regular diet? What are you prepping for?

I'm going to be picking your brains for meal plans and other ration ideas!.

A few years ago... http://www.uk-preppers.co.uk/forum/view ... 91#p176491 I started with carbs and recent events showed me the value of 'comfort food rations'

* I mentioned cooking oil. I discovered to my dismay that it does have limited life of a couple of years past BBE.

[jansman]

had our first arrival of dried food and spices etc today. 25kg brown rice, 25kg white rice, 25kg red lentils, 25kg chickpeas, 20 bags of soup mix, huge bag of sea salt, 2 large backs of spiced crackers, and about 10 large tubs of spices...most of the dates are BB July 2022 apart from the brown rice which is may time next year. what would be the best way to store these for longterm? can we increase the dates by vacuum packing?

As a butcher who uses an industrial vac packer a hundred times a day, I would say that the vacuum packing is not a silver bullet.

Your salt will last, literally, for ever. The brown rice, I believe, doesn’t last as long as white. Worth vacuuming. The white, you could. The crackers ( I assume they are like a biscuit? ) will NOT vac. You will crush the crap out of them!

My own storage involves leaving everything in original packing ( although 25 kg of rice needs splitting up!) and the old rule applies: cool, dry and dark. I use 5/10 gallon drums.

[intuitive]

Serious questions:-
Are these the sort of things in your staple diet? Do you ever make broth? I've lived on such rations for a week and I would have killed for a tin of tomatoes?
Do you have an appropriate stash of things like pasta sauce, tinned tomatoes, passatta, cooking sauces, cooking oil* and dried onions and veg, such that you could make a variety of enjoyable meals? In any case, I salute you for your preparedness. I reckon 50kg of tinned tomatoes, puree, jarred sauce, etc and a lot of nice drinks would be needed to wash that lot down.

Another few questions: Have you balanced these survival rations with happy living rations like tea, milk, wine, chocolate raisins, ... whatever you enjoy day to day? Are you planning to rotate these stocks into regular diet? What are you prepping for?

hi there Jenny hope your all doing well,

this firsts delivery will be split between mine and my father inlaws house for 2 purposes, one its easier to store but 2 its for both households, there are some more items to this delivery still to arrive but i think its just some normal oats i cant think of anything else atm my heads a shed with items and what hes orderd and what im ordering etc...its all just arriving and needs processing.

as for the cooking items we will be heavily shopping for the next month and stocking up on such items, jars or sauces, packets of sauces, meats, stocks, pasta and then tinned items.

our plan is to make sure both houses are sufficient enough to hunker down and or bug out but also so we can both go and get some more hands on time with our gear and find some places of interest incase we needed to group up and stay in the wilderness lol.

So its all abit chaotic atm as you can imagine. We dont expect it to reach a point of such civil unrest we decide to leave home and town and G.O.G for a period of time but we are preparing/prepared for such situations in all areas.

i think we both suprised upon openning the boxes how short the BB was on them all and was wondering how so...hence my questioning of possibly preserving them longer.

once i get a recipe sheet sorted and meal idea i will be sure to post on here or dm you them if i feel there of any use lol. the cooking side is all new to me like this. ive been more on the jamie oliver side of dishes during lockdown and trying some of his they worked well although my house seem to differ in taste so its a nightmare lol

[intuitive]

had our first arrival of dried food and spices etc today. 25kg brown rice, 25kg white rice, 25kg red lentils, 25kg chickpeas, 20 bags of soup mix, huge bag of sea salt, 2 large backs of spiced crackers, and about 10 large tubs of spices...most of the dates are BB July 2022 apart from the brown rice which is may time next year. what would be the best way to store these for longterm? can we increase the dates by vacuum packing?

As a butcher who uses an industrial vac packer a hundred times a day, I would say that the vacuum packing is not a silver bullet.

Your salt will last, literally, for ever. The brown rice, I believe, doesn’t last as long as white. Worth vacuuming. The white, you could. The crackers ( I assume they are like a biscuit? ) will NOT vac. You will crush the crap out of them!

My own storage involves leaving everything in original packing ( although 25 kg of rice needs splitting up!) and the old rule applies: cool, dry and dark. I use 5/10 gallon drums.

hi Jansman. thanks for your reply, hope your doing well.

yeah the crackers was abit of a shock as not what we was expecting there small round biscuit type of things...id say about a £2 coin size and in big blue plastic bags.

there currently sitting in there original plastic and also white fiber bags in there boxes in a dark storage cupboard but will be split up between 2 houses shortly. however having said that my house storage is terrible so im thinking of building a pantry in my dinningroom behind the kitchen door for storage lol

[jennyjj01]

...once i get a recipe sheet sorted and meal idea i will be sure to post on here or dm you them if i feel there of any use lol.

Absolutely, please do. I've messaged you a couple of links.

,,,the cooking side is all new to me like this. ive been more on the jamie oliver side of dishes during lockdown and trying some of his they worked well although my house seem to differ in taste so its a nightmare lol

There's quite a gap between Jamie Oliver Healthy cooking and cooking from minimalist dried and tinned rations, I recommend https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/ja ... 1529015287 or any book on student cooking.

You need to seriously think about how you can adapt your immediate family to dining on the kind of emergency preps that you might have. Bend your rations to what they'll eat: Bend their diets to what's available. Meet in the middle.
I can and will eat any old rubbish that I've experimented on. But it was hell getting family to adapt even a little bit. You'll understand when you try it, and you must try it.
Sneaking in some dried onions, dried carrots, powdered milk, through to eventually introducing jackfruit and soya chunks... It's a rocky road. The first rejected meal of lockdown was a major morale destroyer. Pace it, but do it now.

Dried Onion, Dried carrots, Dried Mushroom, powdered egg, dried mash... Now staples, and they don't even know it.

[GillyBee]

We have limited storage space so like the dried stuff.. You can get dried powdered tomato which makes up into passatta. A couple of tablespoons will do 4 of us.
Dried egg is also a must have. Smells foul but with some sort of flour, oil sugar and cocoa you have cakes, biscuits, pancakes etc and the foul smell vanishes in cooking.
If you take your family favourite recipes, try to convert to storage variations. This soon shows where you have a hole and lets you test recipes out without toooooo much complaint.
(Curry, dahl, lentil/soy bolognaise, beans and rice etc)
I have found that most dried things will keep at year past BBE. Dried fruit may go hard but is still usable if cooked first.

[jennyjj01]

Dried egg is also a must have. Smells foul but with some sort of flour, oil sugar and cocoa you have cakes, biscuits, pancakes etc and the foul smell vanishes in cooking.
I

Where do you get your dried egg. Mine smells OK and makes scrambled egg just fine, and it was mostly BBE Dec 2017. I don't even refrigerate it.
Is yours getting too much air and moisture?

[GillyBee]

Mine came from two different suppliers inc Hoosier Farm. Both smelt the same but we do have some hypersensitive noses around here.
Funky smell is apparently a common complaint for dried egg. It is not a symptom of having gone over and is a frequent point of discussion on American forums where it is a more popular product.